Email: appeasement

Hi Master Malstrom,

 

Several posts ago you made a point that bad economic conditions can lead to war, and IIRC you pointed out the 1930’s prelude to WW2.  In that post or another post around that time you also we could be heading to a big war in the next decade or so.

 

All the hub-ub in the Middle East, the mass immigration of Islam into Europe/America and all those violent protests going on in Europe, as well as the mainstream media’s apparent phobia of criticizing Islam in any way made me think about the term Appeasement.  I remember learning about it in high school history classes.  Of course there’s a big difference in that America sent troops to several Middle Eastern countries, but overall it seems like the West is constantly trying to placate (radical?) Islam and it reminded me of that term appeasement.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement

 

You might find this story of interest then: France’s Le Pen to face criminal charges for statements about Islam.

As a disclaimer, I don’t know anything about the French political system. I am just going off of what the story says. Le Pen said that Islamists praying in the streets of France were like Nazis occupying France. This was said in 2010. In 2011, France banned praying in the streets. As a European Parliament member, she had immunity for speech. But in a secret vote (!), the European Parliament has removed her immunity so she can be prosecuted (for inciting racism).

I’m scratching my head over this. First of all, I thought Islam was a religion and not a race. (Islam is also a political ideology. There is no separation of religion and state in Islamic thinking.) Second, when a politician says something dumb, the other politicians want that person to keep saying it. Apparently, the European Parliament wants Le Pen to shut up. With it being a secret vote against something that was said years ago certainly shows us a ton of fear going on in that Parliament.

Whatever happened to Voltaire’s comment of “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?”

Pim Fortuyn was assassinated for speaking against Islam. The great grandson of the famous painter Van Gogh, Theo van Gogh, was assassinated for speaking against Islam. Then there is Hirsi Ali who had death threats against her written on van Gogh’s body. She was put into hiding and exiled.

I would say that in the United States that the First Amendment prevents such state action over speech but then I am reminded of that filmmaker who was arrested and blamed for the cause of Benghazi. Now, they say he was arrested for other reasons but he was still blamed.

But the demographic future of Islam is very bad. Spengler writes about it. In that 2005 column, he writes about how one thing it has is oil.

But not anymore. The oil fracking revolution, developed by Texans, is the biggest technological change since the computer revolution (where the micro-chip ended the Soviet Union). As the United States and other oil using nations obtain more and more of their oil domestically, the less money comes in for the Middle East. Who would you rather the oil money go to? To Canadians or to Saudi Arabia? Much of the terrorism is funded through these petro-dollars.

So when people say, “All this new domestic oil production hasn’t decreased the price of gas,” that is true, but the price is set globally. OPEC simply reduces their production to keep prices high. The big change is that the money isn’t going to OPEC. It is going to Canada, Mexico, and the United States more and more.

What did collapse in price due to the fracking was natural gas. Natural gas is so abundant in the United States that no one is bothering to drill for it. Coal, which also is very abundant in the United States, now is exporting itself to Europe. Fracking, alone, has re-altered the global economies. Did you know that Israel is about to become an energy superpower with their recent discoveries?

The Middle East is in big trouble because they have squandered their oil wealth and use it primarily to smooth things over via their programs and their constant bribes. As the oil wealth decreases, riots are expected to increase. It is possible that places like Iran could just collapse in on itself.

As the economic depressions continue, we’ll see increased riots and areas trying to secede from their country. That is not where the violence comes from. Other nations, thinking these nations weak due to all these problems, will then coordinate an attack. People say that history is over and there will never be another war. But Human nature is what it is. There will be more war… one day. Perhaps a decade or two from now. A war of today would differ from wars in the past by just how sheer fast it would be. It could start and be over within days. The death toll would be devastating though especially since so many nations have nukes and biological weapons today.

When you look at history from a grand scale, you find that the 20th Century was full of warfare and was very violent. It appears the ‘best of times’ was in the latter parts of the 19th Century with long periods of peace, high industrialization, and high population growth. It’s an interesting period of time you don’t see much written about.